oh my, oh my. I grew up in Santa Fe, we just moved away a little over 2 years ago. I suppose as far as restaurants go, it really depends on what you are looking for. Santa Fe has so many great restaurants. If you are looking for the best breakfast burrito, Tia Sophias is by far the best. It's on San Fransisco st, right down the road from the plaza. The same people own Tomasita's, which is a pretty famous restaurant but has over a 2 hour wait in the summer and personally I think there are better places to eat. Cafe Pasqual's for dinner is a MUST, make sure you make a reservation plenty of time ahead! Get the broiled brie appetizer that comes with a roasted head of garlic and two types of salsa. mmm. If you want something fancy, Canyon rd has a lot of good restaurants, Geronimos being one of them. Chocolate Maven has good lunch and good dessert, as well as Carlos' Gospel Cafe (get there early for lemon meringue pie). El Parasol has the best tacos. Mu Du Noodles and Jinja have great asian food (Mu Du has a divine orange blossom custard). Bert's La Taqueria has great tacos and is more upscale than El Parasol, which is just a basically a stand on Cerrillos rd, Bert's is a full service. There's also this place close to the plaza called the shed, which is pretty popular with the tourists but believe it or not about 2 miles away is La Choza (ironically enough translates into english as the shed) which has the same food and menu but is cheaper and more of the locals go there. Most of these restaurants are if you want local food (aka chile) I tried to limit myself to that but I can go into good italian places, pizza, etc if you need more suggestions. My family is making a trip home in September to peel green chile and visit our relatives, all this restuarant talk makes me excited. Where are you staying? I hope this is helpful and hopefully not too over the top. SF has so many good restaurants that you can pretty much just walk into any place that looks good and you will have a happy belly but these are our personal favs. Have fun, and say hello to those beautiful New Mexican skies for me.
-Brooke
